Ep 12: Film noir before it was famous, with Foster Hirsch + NOIR CITY 16 preview

What was it like to be a devotee of film noir before most people had ever heard of it? Brooklyn College film professor Foster Hirsch, from the Film Noir Foundation's board of directors, joins us to talk about how the concept of noir became widely known in America--and the time when it wasn't. We focus much of our discussion on the writing of his ground-breaking book Film Noir: The Dark Side Of The Screen (1981), one of the first books about noir published in the US. We discuss noir's French origins and how it first became known to American film scholars and cineastes in the 1970s (3:00), the impact of younger filmmakers bringing noir influences to their own work in the early 1980s (16:00), and some of the reasons for the explosion of interest in classic noir since the 1990s (22:45). FNF president Eddie Muller also joins us to preview NOIR CITY 16, including details on the restoration of The Man Who Cheated Himself and other rare titles being shown on this year's festival circuit (32:00). The Dark Side Of The Screen: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Screen-Film-Noir/dp/0306817721/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me= Full schedule and tickets for NOIR CITY 16 available at: http://www.noircity.com/ Please send us any feedback you have on our show to [email protected], and rate/review us on iTunes. Music: Themes from The Big Heat (by Henry Vars), Sudden Fear (Elmer Bernstein), Body Heat (John Barry), and In A Lonely Place (George Antheil).